struck Columbia on the leading edge of the left wing. Two days later, after reviewing film of the launch and detecting the foam impact on the left wing, NASA engineers made a request to shuttle program managers for an in-orbit, high-resolution image of the Columbias left wing to check for damage. The shuttle program managers declined the engineers' request to image the shuttle's wing before reentry. At 9:00:18 a.m. Eastern Standard Time during reentry on February 1, 2003, Columbia disintegrated over Texas, killing all seven members of its crew. According to one source, a total of three requests were made and rejected for imagery of Columbia in-orbit during the 16-day mission. In addition, the CAIB identified eight missed opportunities to determine the extent of the damage, all of which either got no response from mission management or resulted in no action being taken. The first of these was an inquiry on the fourth day of the mission by the chief engineer of Thermal Protection Systems as to whether the crew had been asked to inspect the damage; no answer was received from lower levels of management. The opinion of the managers that the debris strike was only a maintenance-level concern was established early in the mission, making it increasingly difficult for concerned engineers to be heard by those with decision-making authority. As mentioned in the CAIB report: In the face of Mission managers' low level of concern and desire to get on with the mission ... the engineers found themselves in the unusual position of having to prove that the situation was unsafe - a reversal of the usual requirement to prove that a situation is safe. The CAIB report released August 26, 2003 concluded that the physical cause of the destruction of Columbia was damage to the Shuttle's left wing caused by the foam strike during launch. The board also determined that several organizational and human factors contributed to the disaster. These included: Reliance on past success as substitute for sound engineering practices; organizational barriers that prevented effective communication of critical safety information and stifled professional differences of opinion; lack of integrated management across program elements; and the evolution of an informal chain of command and decision-making processes that operated outside the organization's rules. It was in the context of these organizational factors that the CAIB discussed the role of decisions made by Ham, as well as by other